



ADDRESS 




Henry E. Highton 



ON BEHALF OF THE 

SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA PIONEERS. 



AT THE 

Opera house, Mission St. 



* ^Sif-- 



I 



Oil the occasion of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Admission of 

the State of California into the Union, jointly celebrated 

by the Pioneers and the Native Sons of the 

Golden West, Sept. g, i8go. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

C. A. MURDOCK & CO. 

532 Clay Street, 

1890. 



ADDRESS 



Henry E. Highton 



ON BEHALF OF THE 

SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA PIONEERS, 

AT THE 

Opera house, Mission St. 

On the occasion of the Fortieth Anniversaiy of the Admission of 

the State of California into the Union, jointly celebrated 

by the Pioneers and the Native Sons of the 

Golden West, Sept. 9, i8go. 



SAN FRANCISCO: 

C, A. MURDOCK & CO. 
532 Clay Street, 

1890. 






I 



jay uiinBt'ei 

OCT 9 19b 



ADDRESS 



HENRY E. HIGHTON, 

On behalf of the Society of California Pioneers, at the 
Opera House, Mission Street, on the Occasion of the 
Fortieth Anniversary of the Admission of the State of 
California into the Union, Jointly Celebrated by the 
Pioneers and the Native Sons of the Golden West, 
September 9TH, 1890. 



Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : 

The prediction of Bishop Berkeley, the logical 
inductions of the first orator of the Society of Cali- 
fornia Pioneers, are being fulfilled. The Star of Em- 
pire is rapidly advancing to the extreme West. Its 
gleams shone upon the columns of the California Pio- 
neers. Its fuller light irradiates the living Argonauts 
and the Native Daughters and the Native Sons. It 
will rest in resplendent majesty over their descendants. 

The proofs surround us as I speak. The local 
events which preceded the immigration of 1849, — 
most significant in themselves, — for my present objects 
must necessarily be disregarded. But the unbroken 
line of the Pacific States and Territories is a panoramic 
exhibition of the achievements of forty-one years. 
The streets and buildings which have replaced the 



sand dunes of San Francisco, this day present a series 
of historical pictures which connect the old with the 
new and, in the most striking forms, illustrate the story 
of our progress. The designs of the artist, the sym- 
bolism of decoration, have been supplemented by our 
western press in those master pieces of journalism, 
which have diffused practical knowledge among the 
masses, which have condensed the materials for the 
historian, and which have averted from you the possi- 
bility of oral elaboration. 

We are carried back to the trials and privations of 
the thirty-three thousand Pioneers who, forty-one 
years ago, streamed through the defiles of the Sierras 
and over the table lands of New Mexico, and of the 
thirty-eight thousand who broke their way through the 
billows. We see reproduced the stirring incidents of 
that early period and the linked events which have 
brought us to the proportions and to the conspicuous- 
ness to which we have now attained. The long pro- 
cession which has moved through our thoroughfares 
was in itself an epitome of the past, a representation 
of the present, a prediction of the future. It embla- 
zoned the record of a Commonwealth which, within the 
lives of Native Sons, has increased its inhabitants 
from a few thousand to nearly a million and a half; 
which is becoming a network of urban and rural com- 
munities, substantial, educated and polished ; which has 
propelled agriculture, horticulture, trade, commerce 
and manufacture, with gigantic strides; which has 
poured wealth not only into the nation, but into the 
world ; which has written its name and its character 
upon all States and upon all nations; and which has 
witnessed the addition of thirteen stars to our National 
Constellation. 



— 5 — 

It is impossible, even if it were appropriate, in this 
presence and with these surroundings, to mention 
individual names or to parade facts about the State. 
As the Greek painter said of the crown of his genius : 
' ' The curtain is the picture " — as Webster apostrophized 
Massachusetts: "There she stands." The recitals, 
the impressions, the suggestions, of this day, if we are 
faithful to our trust, must sink deep into our hearts and 
permanently affect our lives and our characters. 

Pioneers : Dear surviving brethren of the crowded 
past and of the brilliant present — what unutterable 
thoughts must stir your minds, what unutterable emo- 
tions thrill your souls, as you contemplate and realize 
the full meaning of this extraordinary display! The 
retrospect — beloved companions — is crowded with 
great events which are indelibly stamped upon the 
face of history. 

The youngest of the original Pioneers has passed 
the middle of life, as life is ordinarily measured, and is 
approaching the glittering summit of that slope which 
leads to immortality. The white radiance that encir- 
cles age is gathering about his head. He has caught 
the luster of the beckoning stars. His heart rises on 
the surface of labor and experience to greet the Eter- 
nal calm. He listens to the harmonies that invite him 
to the skies. And yet, there, amidst your ranks — O 
Native Daughters and Native Sons! — he stands erect, 
stalwart, firm, with no sign of bodily decay, with his 
mental faculties vigorous and balanced, with his sym- 
pathies fresh and respondent, and he gazes backward 
with undimmed eyes along the high-road of memory 
and of achievement. 



— 6 — 

Rugged mountain passes — wide stretches of desert, 
broiling in the sun and dense with alkahne dust — the 
long white road, sometimes Hned with new-made 
graves, — the brief oasis, clad in green and moist with 
refreshing streams, — the worn and jaded cattle, listless 
in the sun, reluctlantly dragging their loads, or strew- 
ing their flesh and bones in the wilderness — the prairie 
schooners, ricketty in frame and with their canvas rig- 
ging torn and rotten — the rich blaze of the camp-fire 
at those unfrequent spots where plenty crowned the 
feast, where the flesh of the bison or the antelope 
sweetened the air, and where songs of home arose 
spontaneously from the heart — the shrunken glow of 
the sage-brush fire — wearied men prone on the earth, 
living only on the energy of hope, — the howl of the 
wolf — the rush of the stampede — the whoop of the 
Indian — the cool forests, the deep lakes, the bright 
rivulets, the odors and the music, which wooed the 
jaded adventurers to the promised land — old hulks, 
staggering through the waves and dropping dead 
freight into the fathomless sea — the wide valleys of the 
Sacramento and the San Joaquin, swept by herds of 
antelope and of elk — the broad rivers bearing to the 
western ocean the waters of a thousand tributaries, 
fed by perpetual snow — the wild cattle and the wild 
horses trampling down the grass in the very ecstasy of 
license — the rare and scattered haciendas, with their 
hooded women, dark-skinned and lustrous, and their 
tawny men, red-sashed and spurred — the white walls 
of occasional Missions, contrasting with the dark green 
of the olive-orchards, and picturesque with groups of 
shaded colors and of fantastic attire, from the Indian 
to the Castilian, from the torpid laborer to the intel- 



lectual Franciscan, — the magnificent Bay of San Fran- 
cisco, bursting into view, with its far-reaching pro- 
longations and its guard of mountains, over which 
towered Tamalpais and Mount Diablo — the Golden 
Gate, now closed only to the Asiatic, but forever open 
to every worthy brother and sister of the Caucasian 
race — cities of slender frames, of tents, of sheet-iron 
and of zinc — villages and towns of logs and of can- 
vas, — the miner's cabin, with its open fire-place and 
its bunks — the dance-house, the gambling saloon, the 
bar-room, where virtue and vice, industry and idleness 
jostled each other — the crevice-knife, the wooden bowl, 
the rocker, the long-tom, the flume, the dam, the race, 
the mill — tillage, rising from coarsest forms to the most 
elaborate and finished processes — drainage and irriga- 
tion, luxuriantly fertilizing hundreds of thousands of 
acres of worthless soil — the peninsular metropolis 
turning to brick and stone, crammed with mighty edi- 
fices and a thronging population, while all the State 
participated in its growth — commerce, trade, manufac- 
ture, literature, art, science, quickly ranking us with the 
older communities of the world, — free education under 
our starry flag, from San Diego to Del Norte, from 
the Sierras to the Pacific — public instruction supple- 
mented by private enterprise and munificence — phil- 
anthropy and beneficence, public and private, attested 
by huge monuments of architecture, which invite the 
sick, the insane, the unfortunate, the superannuated, — 
religion, in every recognized form, manifested and 
aggressive in churches and temples, wherever two or 
three are gathered together in the name of God; — 
these are a few, and a very few, of the memories and 
the realizations which are now dramatized in our midst. 



— 8 — 

But why dwell upon these reminiscences, which are 
familiar to us all ? Why even attempt to outline the 
thoughts and the facts, which dilate the mind and the 
bosom even of the youngest original Pioneer? The 
whole State is historically eloquent. Its transitions have 
been made familiar, not only to our own citizens, but 
throughout the Union and in all lands. The master 
race, under the master government, has wrought such 
wonders as cannot be epitomized, — as are scarcely be- 
lieved except by those who, within the briefest period 
known to man, have witnessed the evolution of law 
and order, of industry, of enterprise, of education, ot 
philanthropy, of religion, — of all the phases and evi- 
dences of an advanced organized society. 

As we rise from the gray youth of our organization 
to^those venerable men who span or over-pass the cen- 
tury, the reminiscences, the thoughts and the facts, to 
which I have adverted, thicken and deepen. Through 
all the gradations, in all the advances of the State, the 
Pioneers have done their part and they have won for 
themselves imperishable renown. In no boastful 
spirit, but in sober truth, I claim that their names and 
reputations will descend, clear and lustrous, to the 
latest chronicles of time. Their deeds have not been 
restricted by locality. Great soldiers, great naval offi- 
cers, great statesmen, great diplomatists, great judges, 
are cherished on their rolls. They have been among 
the foremost in industry and in national and inter- 
national enterprise. They have contributed to all the 
arts and to all the sciences, to philosophy, to literature 
and to religion. They have accumulated vast proper- 
ties and have lavished money upon philanthropy and 
patriotism. 



— 9 — 

Our national song has been commemorated, the 
dreams of astronomers reahzed, through the wise 
munificence of James Lick, a Pioneer, whose conse- 
crated bones are deposited under the great telescope 
which points to his home among the stars and draws 
it nearer to our gaze. 



But I must not fall Into lengthy eulogy, and I must 
not omit to notice the melancholy truth that the origi- 
nal Pioneers are swiftly vanishing. Of the overlooked 
and unrecorded dead, I cannot speak. On the mortu- 
ary records of the Society, however, there are already 
seven thousand three hundred and thirty-two names. 
Of the original Pioneers, known to the organization, 
but thirteen hundred and thirteen remain. They will 
be perpetuated directly through their descendants, of 
whom three hundred and sixty-two are now upon their 
roll, while hundreds more are or hereafter will be 
found among the Native Sons of the Golden West. 
Still, within another generation, at the furthest, the 
original Pioneers will be extinct. Those yet left, with 
few exceptions, possess greater vitality, energy, and 
capacity for endurance and for labor, than many thou- 
sands of younger men. They were among the strong- 
est representatives of the strongest race; they were 
inured to hardship and forced to moderation in their 
youth; they acquired and have retained the faculty of 
work ; and, taken as a whole, they are among the best 
living specimens of men from the meridian of life to 
old age. They prove their vigor and intellectual 
acuteness by the spirited controversies in which they 
frequently engage among themselves, but they are an 



lO — 

impenetrable band, clad in complete steel, against all 
attacks from without, and they are brothers, — side by 
side and heart to heart, — stretchinQ^ out firm hands to 
their successors in the mighty task in which they have 
spent their days. 

Their distinctive labor is nearly ended. To you — 
O Native Sons of the Golden West! — they are soon to 
transfer the responsibility of maintaining and improv- 
ing this Commonwealth, of aiding in the growth and 
preserving the integrity of the Nation, of promoting 
the internal and the external development of man. 
They do not ignore, but they appreciate and respect, 
the general body of our citizens, but their special func- 
tions they must delegate to their children and to you. 
Your twelve thousand ought to expand to hundreds of 
thousands. Your sisters — the Native Daughters of 
the Golden West — should increase their numbers to 
an equality with yourselves, — for it is evident that 
there ought to be one Native Daughter for each Na- 
tive vSon. 

To what more capable hands could such a transfer 
be effected. Where could be produced Native Daugh- 
ters and Native Sons, combining beauty, intelligence, 
education and power, in greater perfection ? Where is 
there a population equal to our own ? They are bet- 
ter born, better nurtured, better fed, better clad, bet- 
ter educated, and better-mannered, than any equal 
number of men, women and children on the inhabited 
globe. 

This is solid and incontrovertible fact. But in 
proportion to your advantages and your opportunities — 
O people of the Golden West! — are your responsibili- 
ties. God has invested in vou an unusual amount of 



capital. He will exact from you a corresponding re- 
turn. The talents which have been entrusted to your 
keeping must not be idle, but productive. 

We have finished the stage of internal preparation. 
We are now confronted by the two difficulties of iso- 
lation — comparative isolation — and provincialism. We 
must reach out and grapple the thriving and over- 
crowded centers of our continent and throughout the 
earth. We must adopt new business methods, larger 
and broader in conception, bolder and more systematic 
in execution. We must raise society to the cosmopol- 
itan level and submerge social revolutionists in the 
American ocean. We must arrest the unnatural and 
anti-American influence of individuals, of cliques and 
of combinations. We must maintain perfect order and 
discipline and hold Capital and Labor within those just 
limits which will secure the rights and the prosperity of 
each. Education must be improved so that it may 
not produce drones, parasites, worthless consumers of 
the earnings and the accumulations of industry, but 
American men and American women, true to the 
broad idea of God and the moral law, not ashamed to 
live by the sweat of their brows, possessed of that 
general information which links them to mankind and 
of the special knowledge essential to success in their 
several pursuits, — clean in body, heart, mind and soul, 
and imbued with that substantial Americanism which 
assimilates and concentrates all that is most productive 
and most lasting. 

We must live not only for ourselves and for our fam- 
ilies, but for our neighbors, and not only for our imme- 
diate neighbors but for the County, the Municipality, 
the State, the Nation, the masses of mankind. We 



must fully enter into the great American brotherhood 
and, even beyond that, into the greater brotherhood 
of progressive humanity. 

The Nineteenth Century, with its astounding record, 
will soon be closed. There are individual Pioneers 
who, in some aspects, have witnessed an advance 
during their lives, more than equal to that of all pre- 
ceding ages. 

The world moves by periods of apparent action and 
reaction, but it is never quiescent, and the Divine Will 
never ceases to operate through all existing forces. 
The era of invention — merely to increase wants, 
necessities, comforts and luxuries, — has apparently 
reached its maximum in this century, and I observe 
that true thinkers are exploring moral questions and 
applying moral conclusions to politics, to society, to 
government, to all the important interests of the race. 
The realistic novel or drama — itself an absurd intru- 
sion of selected and exceptional facts as the basis of 
wide generalizations — the countless systems which ten- 
tative!}'' seek to arrest acknowledged evils — the strug- 
gles of modern theology — the color and the tone of the 
higher literature of the day — all point to this conclu- 
sion. 

But believe me, fellow-citizens, you may accumulate 
facts until they are as numerous as the sands on the 
seashore — you may theorize and speculate until your 
minds, — perhaps unconscious of the limits within 
which they are providentially circumscribed, — are dis- 
solved in doubt, uncertainty and indefiniteness — and, 
after all, you will find that the principles, which come 
from above, and are the underlying power of man, are 
simple, fixed and unchangable. You will never escape 



from the Personal God. You will never overturn or 
alter the Moral Law. You will never fundamentally 
change or mend American Institutions as constructed 
by your ancestors or predecessors. You may pare, 
you may prune, you may even graft, and perhaps you 
may improve the outward appearance of the structure 
in which you were born or into which you were 
adopted, but you will never widen or strengthen its 
foundations. And if it were conceivable that a whole 
generation should become debauched and that Pan- 
demonium should temporarily pollute its consecrated 
walls, the structure would yet stand, ready to be occu- 
pied, swept and garnished, by less degenerate children 
of the American Republic. 

Apart from the excellent materials and inducements 
we already possess, in the unequaled possibilities 
which lie before California, there is every incentive to 
good citizenship. If you will study the map of the 
world and abstract yourselves from the fixed ideas 
which have descended from former times, you will 
attain almost, if not quite, to a surprising revelation. 
Observe closely the relative situations of oceans, con- 
tinents and populations; trace the currents of trade 
and commerce, with constant reference to the changes 
of the present century ; consider the historical facts of 
the century, including the multiplication of the means 
of rapid transit and communication through railroads, 
telegraphs, ocean canals, and the many recent appli- 
cations of electricity ; and you will easily perceive that 
the scepter must ultimately be transferred from Europe 
to America. And, within the United States, the cen- 
ters of population, of political and commercial influ- 
ence, are steadily moving towards the West. Obser- 



— 14 — 

vation and experience demonstrate that, in many- 
respects, five modern years are more fruitful than a 
former century. I am earnestly convinced that Cali- 
fornia is to become the most densely populated State 
in the Union. With her internal resources she can 
support at least twenty millions of men and women. 
With competing systems of railroads, with ship canals 
across the Isthmus of Nicaragua and the Isthmus of 
Darien, and with ocean cables beneath the Pacific, she 
would occupy the most central position in the North- 
ern Hemisphere — towards Central and South America, 
towards Asia, towards Polynesia, towards Australasia, 
and perhaps even, for commercial purposes, towards 
Europe. The character of her productions will ren- 
der her an enormous exporter, for she produces what 
the world requires and her resources are scarcely 
opened, and are practically inexhaustible. 

San Francisco, virtually the geographical center of 
the Union, occupies a commanding place in the world 
of traffic and consumption, and, however lightly the 
prediction may be regarded, she is destined to become 
a center of commerce and of exchange. All we lack 
to-day is competition from without and cosmopolitan- 
ism within. 

W^e must comprehend our destiny and grow to a 
higher standard of energy, of duty and of obligation. 
We must improve ourselves and, through ourselves, 
improve our State. We must protect Capital, and, to 
do this, we must protect and encourage Labor. Cap- 
ital is but the product of Labor, directed to specific 
ends. The value of property, the conservation of 
organized society, depends upon Labor. Without 
Labor production would cease, and if all men should 



1 



— 15 — 

become enervated, diseased, incapable of mental con- 
centration and of muscular effort, the human race 
would perish. 

Our American system of government recognizes 
this truth and ultimately rests upon Labor in all its 
forms. Those who are not producers — who add noth- 
ing to that which is produced — who are mere con- 
sumers with money they have inherited or not earned — 
are not only useless, but they are parasites, feeding on 
the State and sapping its vitality. 

The great mass of our Native Sons and Native 
Daughters, — the bulk of our citizens, — are sound, 
healthy, broad-minded, instructed, thoughtful, pure in 
their motives and in their lives, intelligently industri- 
ous, and capable of working under a system which is 
at once symmetrical and expansive. 

But the parasites are here, insubordinate and head- 
strong children, who are not ashamed to eat the bread 
their parents have earned or to plunder the commu- 
nity. In Europe and at the East they have what is 
called esthetic vice, which is one of the most insidious 
and dangerous forms of vice. In our own metropolis 
we have the caricature of esthetic vice, which is the 
worst form in which vice can be expressed. In every 
city and town in the State there are a select few of the 
young men, sometimes kept up by parental wealth o^ 
vanity, whose highest aim is to live dissolute and lazy 
lives and who seek to carry their idleness and their 
dissipation into society itself. It is from these sources 
that corruption derives its agents, who in turn become 
its victims. It is your duty and your opportunity — 
noble Daughters and Sons of the Golden West — to 
rescue the State from such contamination. In social 



— i6 — 

life, open villain}^ is better than varnished or concealed 
viciousness. The lines which surround society, where 
our homes and our families are, where marriage is 
honorable and not a failure, where the deep and true 
affections are predominant, should be closely drawn 
and rigidly maintained. 

Politics is a noble pursuit, in which every American 
should take an intelligent interest, and which becomes 
degraded only through vice, neglect and indifference. 
But partisanship, by tortuous methods, in order to 
avoid labor and gorge the appetites at the public ex- 
pense, is everywhere, particularly in our own country, 
the most ignoble occupation that tends towards the 
extermination of manhood. Arrogant paupers are too 
numerous in our midst and should be suppressed. 
They are the supple tools, also, of abler and more 
designing men, who use them for the building up of 
fortunes or the gratification of insatiable ambition. 
They are lower than slaves, because they are the will- 
ing authors of their own degradation. 



Misdirected or undirected education turns out many 
of the parasites to which I have alluded. Education 
should always end in a definite channel, through which 
the trained power of the scholar should flow. It is 
necessary in a constitutional republic which rests upon 
popular intelligence and virtue — it is valuable in the 
exact proportion that it trains citizens to assume fixed 
relations in the industrial structure and to perform their 
duties and fulfill their obligations with honesty and 
w^ith precision. 



— 17 — 

But education which leads to no practical results 

may be a curse and not a blessing. It may induce an 

antipathy to labor. It may lead to destructive agores- 

siveness, to that petty ambition which 

" o'er leaps itself 
And falls on the other side." 

It may uproot that modesty, which is a marked 
characteristic of real ability, and lead young men to 
jostle their elders aside and to grasp honors and sta- 
tions for which they are unfitted and unqualified. It 
may tend to demoralize the primaries, the conventions, 
the ballot box, legislatures, the judiciary, executive 
offices, the most important elements in a government 
which subordinates the sovereignty of man only to the 
sovereignty of God. 

Modesty is an essential part of capacity, and expe- 
rience cannot be generated from genius. Strength flows 
from honest labor, intelligently applied, and accumu- 
lates with years. He who aspires to command must 
first learn to obey. Insurbordination contravenes the 
first law of earth as well as of heaven and, when asso- 
ciated with plenty, tends to produce drones, toadies and 
sycophants, destitute of independence and virility, 
and only fit to convert a State into a mere dependency 
upon wealth, unequally distributed and, through cor- 
rupt means, exerting a controlling influence over the 
people. 



In all the conditions to which I have referred, the 
surviving Pioneers, whom I have the honor to repre- 
sent, rely upon you, fair Daughters, and upon you, 
brave Sons of the Golden West. Within your organ- 
izations, are included every element requisite for the 



— i8 — 

suppression of e.vil and for the harmonious develep- 
ment of good. Beauty, grace, refinement, delicacy, 
purity, knowledge, power, experience, distinction, are 
all represented in your ranks, and they will give you 
prominence and success in those contests, struggles 
and efforts, in which true citizens must engage. You 
will tread the paths your fathers trod, and this mighty 
State will be committed, not to tax-eaters but to tax- 
payers, not to the emasculated imitators of foreign vice, 
but to vigorous, clear-sighted and faithful Americans, 
robust in body and in mind, and with an hearty con- 
tempt for sloth and for excess. 

And now, Pioneers, my last words must be addressed 
to you. This celebration, in its striking local features, 
is distinctive, and it has harmoniously united the or- 
ganization of which you are so justly proud and the 
Native Sons of the Golden West. It is also broadly 
American in its character, and it includes all our citi- 
zens, while it commands general sympathy and respect, 
not only throughout the Union, but wherever the con- 
trolling ideas of modern civilization prevail. To you, 
however, it has a peculiar significance, which we should 
recognize as we part. It brings home to you personal 
recollections. It revives treasured memories. It re- 
animates your hopes and your aspirations. It vindi- 
cates the principle of association. 

*' Two are better than one ; because they have a good 
reward for their labor. 

" For, if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow ; but 
woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not 
another to help him up." 



— 19 ~ 

To-day you stand — remnant of a noble army — 
among these Sons and Daughters, as stand the senti- 
nel peaks of the Sierras, snow-clad and lofty, while 
strength and loveliness ;ire spread before their feet. 
When the last Pioneer falleth, may he clasp the hand 
of a Native Son and transmit to him, unimpaired and 
in sacred trust, the fraternal inheritance which, for us, 
will then have ceased to exist upon the earth. 



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